HUTCHINSON, Kan. — In response to an open records request from Hutch Post, City Attorney Paul Brown gave two controlling statutes that allow the city to keep all of the information related to the dismissal of former Police Chief Jeff Hooper confidential.
The first note is that city employees that are department heads, like the police chief, do not have employment contracts, they are employees of the City Manager.
So, although the governing body was consulted in this case, as said by Mayor Richardson in the public meeting on Tuesday, ultimately the decision on retention or not is the City Manager's to make. Having said that, the City Manager's continued employment is up to the governing body, so it is not in his best interest to do anything on that scale without letting them know and hearing their feedback first.
Personnel records are not open records, pursuant to K.S.A. 45-221(a)4.
That statute reads as follows:
45-221. Certain records not required to be open; separation of open and closed information required; disclosure of statistical information; records over 70 years old open. (a) Except to the extent disclosure is otherwise required by law, a public agency shall not be required to disclose:
(4) Personnel records, performance ratings or individually identifiable records pertaining to employees or applicants for employment, except that this exemption shall not apply to the names, positions, salaries or actual compensation employment contracts or employment-related contracts or agreements and lengths of service of officers and employees of public agencies once they are employed as such.
Hutch Post also asked for correspondence from the City Attorney's office related to the dismissal, which, in this case, is privileged material, as are most of those types of information between the City Attorney and anyone employed by the city, unless they are part of a public meeting agenda. The controlling statute is K.S.A. 60-426.
60-426. Attorney-client privilege. (a) General rule. Subject to K.S.A. 60-437, and amendments thereto, and except as otherwise provided by subsection (b), communications found by the judge to have been between an attorney and such attorney's client in the course of that relationship and in professional confidence, are privileged
The bottom line is, unless a party to any of the conversations decides to speak to someone in an unauthorized manner, or the former chief decides to speak on his own behalf, the public may never know what went into the termination of the chief. They are not required to say and to do so out of school could put the city into legal jeopardy, as those records are an exception to the open records law.
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